Spitfire PR.IG: Some Details and Decals

How am I going to open this blog post? With words and stuff. Progress is being made, here's some pictures.

What's with the tools? I need to measure a couple real thin strips of tape for masking, and the calipers are a great tool. I placed the Tamiya tape on top of some Scotch tape to keep it clean and maintain its stickiness.

I masked the areas of where the gun ports used to be to paint the red patches. The extremely thin strip of tape from the previous picture is in the middle.

Bottom masked.

All masked up and ready to go. Well.........

You know what? Let's not take any chances. Red would be hard to cover up with the light pink of the Spitfire.

Sprayed, the fastest part of this whole process. Now just need to undress.

Oooooo, the anticipation....

Tada! OK, not great, I ended up getting some bleed through. One thing I will take note of next time is to mix the paint a bit thicker when spraying on masked areas.

You may say some are uneven, but in real life they may have cut these patches by hand, so there.....justified.

Now that the major painting is done, it's decal time! I've always had trouble getting a nice smooth surface after applying the gloss coat. I thought the surface was a bit rough after painting, so I took a chance and took some sandpaper to it. I used Tamiya P2000 grit sandpaper and ever so lightly went over the surface. What do you know? It knocked the roughness down and gave me a much smoother surface. It also removed a few hairs that were embedded in the paint!

Like anything there were a couple of downsides. A couple higher protrusions lost some paint and will need to be touched up. A couple small areas were left with some streaking, which is the best I can describe it.

It was then given a couple coats of Alclad's Aqua Gloss all over.

Let's get to the decals.

Toothpicks worked pretty well for holding the Spitfire. Got my references and ready to go with Micro Set and Micro Sol.

The decal set I ordered from the UK.

So many options! You know what this means? I need to build more Spitfires!

I finally understand what a thin decal is like. I've only recently had experience with Tamiya decals that are nearly so thick, you could almost use a broomstick handle to push them around. These decals were much more difficult to move once they got on the surface. I had a little tearing on the blue roundel areas once they settled around a protrusion that I'll have to touch up.

I did the decalling over a couple of nights. It prevents you from putting your finger on a soft decal. I also don't like to rush the under decals before doing the red dots, since they are still soft and settling. I have some significant silvering on the "ZW" and the serial number, really disappointed about that. I may try carefully masking the "ZW" and spraying some thinned paint over the silvering to help blend it, a suggestion from Mr. D at the last club meeting. I'm just stuck with the serial number the way it is.

Some small details. I sprayed white on the tips and then yellow.

Painted with Model Master Aircraft Interior Black.

BAHHHHH! I also had a little bleed under here as well. It's not until after this that I read and realized that I should avoid thinning the paint as much before spraying.

That's all here for now. I'll be working on some of the smaller details, so hopefully I can wrap this up in a month or so! ...or so I say now.

The Alternate History Apache - Background Story and Winter Camo

We're getting to the final stages of this project. Since this is called the "Alternate History Apache" it should have a story, so maybe it goes like this.

In January of 1941, the German scientists stumbled across an alien technology while digging out the area that would become Peenemünde. This allowed them to time travel, but only a maximum of 70 years into the future. With this device they voyaged looking for military technologies that could help them win the war. Among other things, they were able to capture this U.S. Army Apache and bring it back to 1941 to give them an advantage in ground support operations. They were also able to capture enough rocket pods and missiles to make it worth while.

Do you think if they traveled from early 1941 to present day, they would have still invaded Russia in June and declared war on the United States in December? What if they would have fortified Normandy, and not waited for the invasion at Calais? Would an appropriate and earlier deployment of the Me-262 in a fighter role make a difference in the air superiority battle over Europe?

These kinds of questions keep me up at night. Not really, let's get on with the build.

Cutting out the decals. Those don't look like U.S. Army decals!

A mix of WWII German armor paint scheme and a modern U.S. Army Apache.

It was somewhere around this point that I realized that if this was a captured helicopter by Nazi Germany, the "United States Army" would have been painted over with the Panzer Schwarzgrau. "Why didn't they put Luftwaffe colors on?" Because, this was the color scheme we wanted to do and it's alternate history.

After the chipping fluid was applied, Thing Two started on the white wash.

Getting coverage. Look at that beautiful airbrush.

Thing Two did a really good job at laying down this color. Although the purpose was uneven coats. He also kept the spray pattern in a vertical motion per instruction.

The winter camo scheme applied.

Now for the fun part. We only had a limited time for the chipping fluid, so we needed to act fast.

We both chipped together. I bought a package of cheap brushes to have a variety of sizes and uses. I took a couple of them and cut them so they would be stubby and scratchy. It really made a difference scraping at the paint.

This side nearly done.

Successfully chipped!

Gave the underside some attention!

I wanted the propeller blades to have some wear as well.

After masking, I sprayed Tamiya Flat Aluminum.

Then, with the help of Thing Two, we applied some Maskol to the blades.

I sprayed the blades with Model Master Aircraft Interior Black. I found it has a nice soft black for propeller blades.

Thing Two is removing the Maskol via the finger method. Over one month on, and I'm still finding Maskol that needs to be removed.

Here, Thing Two is brush painting the blade holder a steel color. There are a lot of nooks and crannies with this part. It's amazing how you realize the complexity of a part when you're brush painting versus spraying.

Painting the machine gun with Model Master Gun Metal.

We painted the exhaust with Model Master Jet Exhaust. I don't really care for the goldish color. We'll darken it down with weathering in the next stages.

There it is. The Apache has slightly progressed since this post was originally crafted and I will provide an update when I can get to it, you know, because life.

Merry Christmas!

Hanomag Base Color and Decals

I've reached the slowest point of the project, painting and weathering. So much waiting. Not so much time. I don't think this is going to get done in the next 6 days. 

During the painting process I was able to "watch" Welcome To the Jungle (the Van Damme movie, and not related to Guns & Roses) and Gettysburg on Netflix, so about three hours. I saw things, followed a story, didn't really hear any words because of the air compressor. Something tells me that Welcome To the Jungle isn't going to see any Oscar nominations.

So exciting, pre-shaded wheels on sticks.

Nearing the end of the pre-shading extravaganza, I started to get the hang of it! Pre-shading was done with flat black. I was having some trouble getting a nice clean, fine line out of the airbrush. When I was shooting a fine line it was coming out like very small round dots. Maybe it was a paint consistency issue?

I seriously had doubts as to whether or not pre-shading was a futile exercise, but I thought I would give it a try anyway.

It's like a wheel graveyard!

The base coat is Panzer Schwarzgrau (black-grey). I think my skepticism was mostly accurate. It was difficult keeping the pre-shading visible, but it's a little more noticeable in person. My original plan was to chip the base coat to reveal the oxide primer. I didn't because I wanted to accelerate some progress on this build at the moment. I'll give it a shot soon though.

Now it looks pretty close to the plastic it was molded in!

After three coats of gloss, the decals were applied.

Based on some minimal research, Hanomags did not appear to be heavily marked.

The stuff I used here was Model Master Acryl Flat Black and Panzer Schwarzgrau. The gloss coat was Alclad II Gloss Klear Kote (ALC 310) Lacquer and the decals were set with Micro Set and Micro Sol.

I used this website for some historic photos of the Hanomag, World War Photos (Hanomag) 

Now that the decals are done, I will be putting on a few more coats of gloss for some basic oil streaking before moving on. There is plenty of work left on the little parts, rubber for the wheels, the tools, the guns and finally the tracks. I still need to figure out what to do with the tracks.